“Spend one day with two of the world´s most renowned professors and
keep yourself up-to-date with the latest trends, topics and
discussions”, this is what com.sult initiator David Ungar-Klein and
Astrid Kleinhanns, the managing director of the WU Executive Academy,
want to offer to business executives.
The
Executive Academy of the Vienna University of Economics and Business
Administration turned this idea into reality at the com.sult by
organizing an executive education workshop where cutting edge business
and management topics are being discussed.
The didactic
design embraced case studies, group works and lectures and allowed
interactive learning experiences to change perceptions and mindsets.
Prof. Pankaj Ghemawat is Professor for Strategy at the
Harvard Business School (HBS) and Eric von Hippel is Professor for
Innovation at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
In
the workshop Prof.
Ghemawat reviewed the principles of business strategy by setting up
discussions of how companies can come up with “New Game Strategies”
that change the basis of competition. He used famous Harvard cases to
work out some of the approaches that companies can follow to
successfully compete in the market. Among his “recipes” was “focusing
on constraints” lie Airtel in India has done or “focusing on changes”
by which Mittal Steel became the No.1 steel producer in the world of
“altering mental maps” or “changing core assumptions”.
Prof.
Eric von Hippel focused on the fact that innovation is rapidly becoming
democratized. Users aided by improvements in computer and
communications technology, can develop their own new services and
products. These innovating users often freely share their innovations
with others, creating user-innovation communities. Prof. Eric von
Hippel explained why and when users find it profitable to develop new
products and services for themselves and why it often pays users to
reveal their innovations freely for the use of all. Traditional market
research tends to neglect those lead users because they cannot sell
many products to them however many products that lead users develop
today will be wanted by the target market tomorrow.
Astrid
Kleinhanns commented the first such executive education day, “I am
convinced that this day was a fantastic opportunity for all innovative
companies and leaders to be kept up-to-date with new developments in
international business. I am very proud and happy that we are able to
offer this service at the com.sult now and in the future to top
executives.”
